Is Life Meaningful?

I cannot, even unto myself, dare to say that life is not meaningful. It is nonetheless yes.

In the beginning, the earth was without form, and void, and then came light (the day) and darkness (the night), then waters and heaven, then came dry land, seas, seeds, and trees, and then came life for living creatures and life for man. Indeed, life is God-given. It was a gift for us to be lived and it was made complete. Before he created man and breathe life on the very sixth day, He prepared everything a man could need during the six-day creation. Who can now say that life cannot be lived meaningfully? If we will just turn our sights around, we have a world to live, a breath to breathe, a family to behold, friends to lean on, and a God to depend upon.

Who among us now can even dare to say that life is not meaningful? Even the blind can make it as meaningful as it is. Take for example Helen Keller, a blind woman, who in her blindness still found life a worthwhile one to live. At her tender age of 19 months, she was stricken with a severe illness which left her not only blind but also deaf. Yet, in his poem, she wrote.

                        They took away what should have been my eyes

                                    (But I remembered Milton’s Paradise).

                        They took away what should have been my ears,

                                    (Beethoven came and wiped my tears).

                        They took away what should have been my tongue,

                                    (But I had talked with God when I was young).

                        He would not let them take away my soul –

                                    Possessing that, I still possess the whole.

-          Helen Keller

In fact, she was graduated ‘cum laude’ from Radcliffe College. She was taught to speak audibly, read and write well by her dedicated teacher, Anne Sullivan. She then became one of history’s remarkable women. She dedicated her life to improving the conditions of the blind and deaf-blind around the world, lecturing in more than 25 countries. Whenever she appeared, she brought new courage to millions of blind people. In the end, she found fulfillment in her life, though she was blind (The Helen Keller’s Story).

Life is so meaningful. Sometimes, we just say it is not. We let our tongue to conclude that life is rude and worthless. Remember, words are powerful. Once we declare it, then it is really what it is. See how everything in this world was created through the power of the tongue. Again, life is so meaningful. Sometimes we just think it is not. The mind is also as powerful as the tongue. It is the root of all. As it is said in proverbs, “Sow a thought, reap an action; Sow an action, reap a habit; Sow a habit, reap a character; Sow a character, reap a destiny”. Everything starts with a thought on your mind, and then, this thought turns out to be your destiny. If you think that life is meaningless, then really it is. You will, yea, become destined to find life meaningless. But if you think the other way around, then, you are proclaiming that you will find a meaningful life in the end. Remember, “What your mind can conceive, your body can achieve.”

However, we come to reality, that most of among us find life as just a matter of routines, like sleeping, eating and working with occasional landmarks such as marriage, birth and death. Seasons and years come and go. Even special events like vacations and holidays can become repetitious, less exciting and meaningful as we grow older (Mueller, 2011). Then how can we, amidst these things, still find life as meaningful?

Denotatively, a meaningful life is a broad term encompassing a varied number of definitions having to do with the pursuit of life satisfaction (Meaningful Life, Wikipedia.org). We consume most of our time, talents and energy to pursuit of material things, and/or pleasure and leaving a legacy. We use these three approaches to find the meaning of life (Mueller, 2011).

In pursuit of material things, we are in love with having a modern home, latest model cars, lots of clothes, a wide variety of food and as many electronic gadgets as possible. The desire for more and better things has resulted in a throwaway society where new is better, savings are low and debt is high. The cost and quantity of things that are accumulated measure success. But what could this imply? There arise two problems. First, possessions tend to possess the possessor. The more you have, the more there is to take care of and worry about. Secondly, things and wealth that are accumulated are left behind after death occurs. These can result to beneficence or maleficence. Now we go back to the bottom line: we must full understand that the man enters this world with nothing and takes nothing out of it, so it is not true that the one who dies with the most thing wins. Therefore, life in pursuit of material things is just a waste.

            In pursuit of pleasure, which is the second popular philosophy of life, we manage to experience life to the fullest. We want a lifestyle of traveling, multiple sexual partners, drugs, new restaurants and entertainment forms (e.g. TVs, CDs, VCRs, Internet, etc.), seeking excitement and pleasure that are fleeting. In this approach, there is no lasting satisfaction and it could just lead to frustration.

A third and likewise a popular pursuit of life’s satisfaction is to leave a legacy. Alas, living for family, fame or fortune may be noble but it is ultimately futile. Family members and human relationships seldom turn out the way we like. Fame and fortune dwindle over time, and facts are frequently altered to meet political, cultural, or religious objectives. Where can we find satisfaction here? Even King Solomon of the Bible, who was a person with vast wealth, time and wisdom, who had 300 wives and 700 concubines, tried all of life’s pursuits but, in the end, found them all to be meaningless vanity like he’s chasing after the wind.

The same happened to Leo Tolstoy when he wondered and asked, “All right, you are going to have six thousand desyatinas of land in the Government of Samaria, and three hundred horse, - and then?” Or, when he thought of the education of his children, he said, “Why?” Or, when he reflected on the manner in which the masses might obtain their welfare, he asked, “What is that to me?” Or, when he thought of the fame which his works would get him, he said, “All right, you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, and all the writers in the world, - what of it? WHAT IS IT FOR?” (Tolstoy, pp. 573)

      After the entire crisis Tolstoy encountered in him and after all the contemplation he had, he arrived at a conclusion, that “Everything in this world is only a deception, unless we find the truth of life, which is a life with God, a life with faith (Tolstoy, pp. 574-576).

Life can be at the start meaningless to us. We cannot understand it but we must not think of it but live. Live a life with FAITH, which gives us the meaning of life. How must we live? – “According to God’s law”. What real result will there be from my life? – “Eternal bliss or eternal torment”. What is the meaning which is not destroyed by death? – “The union with infinite God, paradise” (Tolstoy, pp. 576).

            “No matter what answers faith may give, its every answer gives to the finite existence of man in the sense of the infinite, a sense which is not destroyed by suffering, privation, and death. Consequently in faith alone could we find the meaning of life. What then was faith? I understood that faith was not merely evidence of things not seen, and so forth, not revelation (that is only the description of one of the symptoms of faith), not the relation of man to man (faith has to be defined, and then God, and not first God, and faith through Him), not merely an agreement with what a man was told, as faith was generally understood, - that faith was the knowledge of the meaning of human life… Faith is the power of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe that he ought to live for some purpose, he would not live. If he does not see and understand the phantasm of the finite, he believes in that finite; if he understands the phantasm of the finite, he must believe in the infinite. WITHOUT FAITH, ONE CANNOT LIVE (Tolstoy, pp.577)

Now, do we find life as meaningless if there are trials, problems, downfalls, losses, breakups, goodbyes, pain, heartaches, tragedies, dilemmas, struggles, challenges, and much more to mention which test our faith? We now question, if faith is the reason to live and God makes life meaningful, why do we have to go through situations of life like these? Very well, just as said in the Book Wagas, “The storm of life never destroys, it simply rearranges and it is up to us, if we really want to, to pick up on the pieces and start anew” (Guillermo; 2012; pp. 101)

Life is made colorful through situations in our life. In fact, we could further and thoroughly understand life’s meaningfulness through the journeys of ups and own we have been through, we are going through, and will be going through. It’s good to reflect that roses are made perfectly with its thorns. Even the world is not made plain. There are mountains, valleys, hills to climb off, broken roads to slip away, and tall grasses to prickle and mud lands to slide through. We sometimes need to experience the opposite of something to understand its another opposite. We need to experience night to fully comprehend what is a day.

God allows circumstances to come our way for us to fully understand life’s value and meaning. God breaks our heart to make us whole. He breaks our spirit to save our soul. He sends us pain so we can be stronger. He sends us failure for us to strive more. He sends us illness so we can take better care of ourselves. And at times, He needs to take away everything from us so we can in return learn the value of everything.

           

Life is meaningful. It was designed by God to be lived fully by the people who will find relationship with Him through faith. We can only find lasting life’s satisfaction in Him, with Him and through Him. And in search for the meaningful of life, we can find it when we experience the abstracts of life, not in any pursuits. Life is rendered short and is only once, so we must live to the fullest. Live the best out of it. Live a meaningful life.